April 2010 Grocery Challenge

butdoineedit?

Well just a little spend this weekend - £11.12 but reckon that is me sorted till the end of the month (almost).
Am away next weekend at my grans & have a load of sandwiches that i have just popped in the freezer, so reckon i can make my budget last with some storecupboard eating, might not be the most exciting but at least it's cheap!!

Winchelsea

A relatively big spend on food for me today, but think I'm still on track. I have £34.04 to last 12 days, but will have a big enough back-up from my storecupboard.

Called into A**i this afternoon with DS's friend, as have not been near one of their stores for a few years. What I saw makes me keen to go back another time (could do it on the bus with my granny pass), but for today I just bought some fruit (which we eat loads of) - this was £2.04 on apples, oranges and bananas.

The big spend of the day though was some stocking-up via Approved Fds (£12.77) AND Food Bgns (£17.11). These are my second orders from each of them, and was certainly pleased with what I had from them last month.

Have updated my sig.

Cooked a cheap and cheerful meal this evening - big hearty jacket spuds with a stir fry of the remains of several different veg tarted up with chopped up sardines, dried apricots and plenty of spices, and a salad made from the end of a cuke and various leaves from the garden (including dandelions and baby strawberry leaves) with Italian dressing. Probably sounds revolting, but we enjoyed it!

Coxy11

Hi everyone,

Haven't posted for ages, so on to update my spends/totals.

Have gone over this month. Had my Dad staying from Cyprus, on and off for 3 weeks. Didn't know from week to week when he would be with us and DSis so made it hard to meal plan. However, there's no point getting het(sp?) up about it.

All 3 children starting packed lunches again from tomorrow, so will need to shop more often for fresh goodies. Have enough to last until my April GC month end, which is Wednesday 21st.

MrT have whole cucumber for 59p and Florette salad bags for 89p - HTH somebody.

Off to update my siggy.

Coxy
xx

skaps

Spent alot while shopping at Mr Ts yesterday and actually did not really need to go shopping. As we took my mum shopping we ended up buying things. Luckily im still within budget - £148.10.

wssla00

WAHOOO! :dance: It's the last day of the month so I've done it! YAHOO!

I have an NSD today so my total will be £177.18 for the month can't believe I was previously spending just under that a WEEK!

Hmm now need to think about May's challenge. I am not sure whether I should do £150 or £200..... £150 maybe? I'm gonna have a really good try!

Definitely the one big shop a month is helping me! Going to try that once again

Good luck everyone... gonna work on my shopping lists for the biiggggg shop!

jintyb

Hi all, well that's my April finished officially and Im delighted - £50 under!! :j Im going to stick to the same amount (£210) for May, I've done a big shop at Costco and I got loads of whoopsies at A*da today plus a f & v shop at Li*l, so freezer and cupboards stocked up! This will keep us in meals for most of the month so just fresh stuff to get weekly. I've also included a foodshop for when we go on hols in May ( its self catering so we usually take the basics with us) Fingers crossed for another good month!:)

Winged_one

I spent more than I should have, but OK in the overall scheme of things at the weekend. I went to Lidl on Fri for veg and some wine, and spent €118 there. But there was enough wine for a couple of months in that (it's often just easiest to get a good few bottles at a time). And I picked up a bottle that is nice, but misread the price on - so instead of €5.25 a bottle, I bought 6 at €8.99 a bottle. But as that is the cheapest we would have bought wine at 6 months ago (before we found the nice wines in Lidl), I am not weeping and moaning too much - and it IS a nice bottle of white for summer drinking. (I spent more than €100 of that on wine - which theoretically could be a different budget, but I am including it in GC as it was a SM I bought in).

And then I went to M&S for yesterday's dinner as the Dine in for 2 offer was on. I got a chicken (I got the largest I could find, at €8.76 - there were some people just grabbing from the front of the shelf as most SM's here do chicks on a standard price, and I saw prices as low as €6.13!), and a pack of mussels for later this week. Parmentier potatoes (to go with confit duck legs tonight - I already had potatoes prepped for roasties at home) and garlic breads (for mussels, or pasta dishes - always welcome!), apple pie (last night) and chocolate puds (treat for me and DH after his interview tomorrow!). And 2 bottles of wine - knocking over €20 off the shelf prices. Then, as summer is coming and we are already using the garden again, I got some pretzels and prawn crackers (which we always love and were both on BOGOF), and the lovely handcooked crisps (also loved and on special offer). Sausage rolls (nice alternative to sambos as an occasional treat), bread and milk (the 3l carrtons being slightly cheaper again than anywhere selling 2l) and some satsumas for fruit. And the mini-cheeses that we take in our lunchboxes (which means we both have some calcium reasonably regularly). Overall I spent €67 there (including a birthday card for DNephew which DD picked out).

So I am down to €117 for the final 10 days, but that should be fine. We have plenty in the freezer that we are trying to use up (which is why I didn't do a full SM shop this week) and I think we have enough of the usual mid-week needs to avoid shops until next weekend. Unless I need more carrots for my own lunchbox (I am back onto the salads again). And lots of what I bought this weekend will get used slowly over the next 2-3 months anyway, so happy with where the yearly budget is at too.

Menu loks slightly different to the plan late last week -
Confit duck legs tonight with parmentier potatoes (duck was €4 couple of weeks ago and needs to be used this week) - there wasn't actually a lasagne in freezer.
There's enough leftover chick for a chick curry tomorrow.
And I will be using the mussels on Wed or Thurs, with either lamb or pork chops for the other night.

Wings

jasperconran

hi all,

I have been directed here by some lovely peeps that I have been talking to re: organising my life! lol. housework n stuff. And they suggested I stop here and start joining the grocery challenge. So here I am!:rotfl:

There are only 3 of us in the house, me, OH and DD (13), oh and 1 doggie lol. I try to meal plan and keep my shopping bill down as much as poss, but always seem to be running to the shops for flaming bread and milk, like all the time:eek: I am sooooo disorganised, and as you can see from my sig, we have a lot of debt:eek: So I will be joining if thats ok, I have also been wondering how much meat I should buy for the month for us:( I try to make things last, but never seem to manage it! what do you all think? any ideas? I am sooooooo bad at this stuff lol. thanks

wssla00

What i do is i write a list of all the things I want to eat this month in a word document, then I write a Y or a N next to the thing as to whether I have the ingredients in. I then use an online butcher and buy the whole months worth of meat in one go, then when it gets here I freeze it.
Then one big shop with all the other main stuff- carrots, potatoes dry goods loo roll, cat food etc then only pop in once in a while to the shop to top up on a small amount of things like fruit and veg. It means I am not tempted- as I am so usually and it helps me stay within budget- if we dont have it we dont have it!

THE4WHINGERS

hi all
did really well today for the first time ever i nipped into our local small supermarket for a paper and ONLYcame out with a paper :jusually have a carrier load of whats on offer cos i think its a bargain even if i dont need it !!! .Lasted well over weekend with homemade flapjacks and a weetabix cake even had some left for lunch boxes :jso thats only a paper in 2 days thats a miracle in our house:D